I. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to a web material inspection system. More particularly, the present invention relates to an inspection and characterizing system for web material involving the forming of a duplicate image of, in particular newly produced material, onto another medium that can be readily accessed and inspected.
II. Background Discussion
Continuously processed material such as continuous web material typically in a paper form is many times stored in a roll form. During a manufacturing process the material that is produced may include defects or it may be desired to determine the position of certain indicia on the continuous material. At the present time there is no known effective technique for inspecting for defects or for identifying certain characteristics of the continuous material, such as certain printed text thereon.
In the case of web material being fed, such as paper web material being fed from say a laser printer, the manufacturing process is carried out quite rapidly and it is difficult to provide any reasonable type of human inspection. Furthermore, because the continuous material is usually wound into a roll, it makes the material generally inaccessible and thus it cannot be inspected without unwinding the roll.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a technique for web material inspection to record defects in the continuous material and in particular the position in the roll of such defects. A related object of the invention is to also provide for the inspection of continuous material for the purpose of identifying predetermined characteristics of the continuous material and/or predetermined characteristics of images thereon.